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80 thoughts on “The Watering Hole: October 2 — Brainwashing”

I see the trolls at TP attacked with full force this morning. Most of the first sixty or so posts on today’s first thread had 30-40 vote downs except for yiggypoo (or whatever he called himself today) who had 35 up votes. I wrote TP and said goodbye, that I’m no longer going to waste my time there, but that if they ever get the mess cleaned up to let me know, maybe I’ll come back.

Bill Mahrer is getting a lot of play out of the O’Donnell “witch” clips. But there’s something missing in the debate.

I know Bill is pointing out the hypocricy of the Right, but he misses the fact that now that she claims to be a Christian, the Right will forgive her earlier indiscretions.

That leaves us with the inference that someone who is a witch is somehow not to be elected to public office.

It would be nice if Mahrer pointed out that witches believe in the same “Nature’s God” that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence. It would be even nicer if he mentioned that witchcraft stemmed from the ancient healers, and only became demonized with the advent of Christianity.

Actually, BnF, viewed through just an ordinary lens, the brainwashed (trolls) have won — in itself a fascinating, though not historically unusual, statistic. Actually, I keep waiting for the brainwashed millions to start talking about Canada in terms of lebensraum.

Speaking of “coloring books,” I’ve always found this piece by Corliss Lamont charming mostly for its title (hope I don’t f*ck up the HTML tags):You Might Like Socialism

Lamont’s discussion is a bit simplistic, far to “statist” in its orientation, and he completely jumps the shark when he begins extolling the virtues of Stalin (which, sadly, many on the left did in the 1930’s). Still, the book is not entirely without its virtues.

If my tags worked, the link above is to a freely downloadable version at the Internet Archive.

Lamont was scarcely alone in this, and it was and remains one of the frequent criticisms of the left by the right that not only did folks like Lamont praise Stalin, but years later people on the the left have often — maybe even generally — failed to criticize themselves and the members of the progressive groups for having done so.

That is a failing, Gary. It seems like there is no single group that’s perfect, and we must be able to call out those of our own political persuasion for their errors, crimes, and asshole-ish behavior.

The rivalry between the two groups even surfaced in a last-minute lawsuit. The Chantilly-based event-staging company that helped produce the Beck rally sued unsuccessfully Wednesday to stop the “One Nation” event. The company, National Events, alleged that the groups organizing the Saturday’s rally solicited a bid sheet from the company to help stage the event and then used its proprietary information to secure lower prices from other vendors.

The Tides Center, a nonprofit organization doing business as One Nation Working Together and also known as USAction, said that it never contracted with National Events and that it never agreed to keep National Events’ bid information private.

I think this quote from Beck is telling:

“All of these groups, and the president of the United States, want nothing short of fundamental transformation of America,” Beck said on a recent show.

if there was no god, there could also not be any atheists. therefore the existence of atheists is also proof of god.

Circular logic at its best, yes? no? maybe so?

The daily kos hate mail is an exquisite example of stupidity and the dumbing down of America!

Common sense – if you’re not born with it – it’ll never be acquired proven by the writer of that screed to Kos.
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on today’s gathering and the attempt to stop it: isn’t that whole thing about free-market meant for all or just the idiot gop/teabaggers?

“1. Only those who have served in the military can vote or hold elected office. This would remove cowards and traitors from the political system.”

That would basically disallow all Republican males from ever voting or holding public office, esp. if it included the proviso that deserters were also automatically disqualified. If only it had been in effect in 2000 the Bush administration would never had happened!

Wingers are totally stupid and without cogent thought. But they can be, on occasion, funny as hell. 8)

I thought that one was pretty good. Teabaggers wants more and more freedom and liberty, but seem satisfied to let those in authority take care of them. Talk about a “nanny state!” They would be so disappointed about how that would turn out.

I missed the end of the rally, but the nap sure did feel good. Meanwhile, plowing through the publisher’s galley proof of my book is eating the day’s hours like a hungry snake. I should be 2/3rds of the way through by tomorrow at this time, maybe finished by midweek. 715 pages, looks like. I’ll sure be glad when this part of the job is completed!

I voted for “read the Constitution, you nazi faggot” but it’s not getting great ratings. I almost voted for “I’m literally crapping myself” just because the moron doesn’t know what the word “literally” means.

One of my oldest friends commented on FB that his favorite line from the quarter was ” “You are the fucking Justin Bieber of politics, but even more gay!” My friend, incidentally, was the first gay Maoist I ever met.

if there was no god, there could also not be any atheists. therefore the existence of atheists is also proof of god.

“Circular logic at its best, yes? no? maybe so?”

Aggressively circular; one might rather call that “circular logic at its worst” because there’s nothing even a little subtle about it that a person capable of no more than momentarily immitating thought would have any difficulty seeing through it. The claimant is assuming that nothing exists without God, which is the conclusion he wants to draw and hence not valid as a premise.
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I think the focus on c*cksucking is just an expression of their own vicious homophobia and mysogyny (sp?). “Obviously” anyone who would do that is contemptible.
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Z: I didn’t catch much of the rally; I found many of the interviews annoying, as I wanted to see the rally itself. I am mostly interested in the official attendance numbers anyway.

I’ve seen an unofficial estimate from an unofficial source at 200,000. But my limited experience suggests that such numbers invariably range high, and it usually takes until the next day for something more accurate to come along.

I’m no good at estimating crowd size, but on VERY casual observation it looked roughly like Glenn Beck’s crowd a month ago. More or less. So, on Fox it should be a million or two; more realistically, maybe 85-100,000?

When I still had teevee, just surfing past Fux would cause me to see spots in front of my eyes because of the copious amounts of lip gloss, and have brain seizures because of all the crap going on on the screen.

The Indycar season ended on a high note for my favorite Lady, as Danica Patrick outdrove her Andretti Autosport teammate Tony Kanaan beating him to the finish line by an eyelash, to finish second in the final race of the season. Target Ganassi’s Scott Dixon was a straightaway ahead, to take the win. Target Ganassi’s other driver, Dario Franchitti, also known as Mr. Ashley Judd, won the series championship by 5 points over Penske driver Will Power.

On a restart with 20 laps in the race, Kanaan started second, and Danica third. With 12 laps to go, Danica got alongside Kanaan, but he held her off, then every time she looked low, he moved down to block, and when she ran high, he moved up there. This went on for ten laps. Finally she got under him with two laps to go, and he pulled alongside coming out of the final turn, but she beat him to the finish line barely!

The other four ladies in the race didn’t do nearly as well, with Sarah Fisher finishing 22nd, her Dollar General sponsored car painted bright pink to honor Susan G. Komen Race For The Cure. Simona de Silvestro finished 23rd, Milka Duno hit the wall on lap 170 to finish 24th, and Ana Beatriz did the same on lap 101 for 26th.

Danica resumes her Nascar career shortly, so she’s not done for the season. More later on that.

House, it is a very ‘chess/checkers’ game type situation for the NL.
Our rally caps didn’t do the trick yesterday nor today. Not even my nephew in-law actually donning SF paraphernalia (he’s a hardened Rockies fan). My niece also bleeds O&B. We’ve all grown up loving the Gigantes – my niece does not shy away from wearing Giants gear – she lives in Denver and takes no guff about the orange & black.

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Tomorrow I go collect Mr. Mellow, the cat – he needs to have boosters so I’m not certain how he’ll be in the carrier.
Oh, did I mention – that the management of the apt. complex has to meet the cat and approve?
Oh moses help us! I haven’t a clue how Mel will do.
I mean the stress level of being in a carrier; immunizations and then a brand new place…
the management isn’t in until Monday – well I’m not going to traumatize the cat twice placing in the carrier. The manager will have to come to the apt to ‘interview’ the cat!

How are you doing these days, House? Still watching the Sunday funnies known as ‘talking heads’?

I haven’t visited C&L in so long – will wander over now to see what’s up.

Last night I was having connection problems, which Comcast wouldn’t confirm were on their end. If the modem were to blame, how come it’s working now? I got tired of unscrewing the coax and unplugging the power to reset it.

I might get to watch in the morning, if I don’t stay up too late.

Hopefully Mel will handle the new place ok. My cats don’t like the carrier much going to the vet, either.